Capitalism is the name of the society under which the world groans today. None deny it, and many applaud it. That society is, by definition, a society ruled by capitalists. Capitalists command the wealth of the world, the fruits of the labor of the many toilers of this Earth. More importantly, the capitalist owns the means by which that wealth is produced: they domineer over the places and tools through which work is done, and despotically control the centers of all social life, creativity, and human development. This outright domination even penetrates profoundly into our political institutions and collective ideals. Democracy is leashed. The vile impulses of aggression and greed are unleashed. The deepest hopes of the human imagination and the simplest desires for equality and community are repressed and subordinated. The wholesome Earth belongs not to us! Our robust bodies are used to create wealth for another. Our spiritual faculties of reason and imagination are compelled to produce instrumental irrationality and mass dullness.

This state of things must be abolished. Catastrophes lurk at every corner. The gulf between rich and poor widens. Humans are constantly criminalized, forcing the good and righteous men and women of this Earth into vicarious lives of fear and destitution. Tensions rise, hate boils over. Irrational and unnecessary forms of production proliferate, and the society based on spectacle and greed supplants all institutions based on truth and need. Cerebral scientists needlessly search for life on Mars while life on Earth is being denied. Solidarity disintegrates, and the lonesome individual falls into depression and despair. Capitalist social relations poison the environment and devour our natural resources. Capitalist states militarize to unheard of proportions. The owners of the means of production are more and more resorting to the means of destruction to terrorize over us. The crisis tendencies of capitalism have not ameliorated themselves; cyclical depressions and recessions and depressions haunt our dreams and affect our daily lives. A society based on constant compound economic growth is unsustainable. Balloons pop, bubbles burst, and stars explode. Thus, workers of the world must unite to avert the coming catastrophes of this century. The current ordering of things must be abolished and destroyed to pave way for the new re-ordering of the world. The arising political power and creativity of working peoples must intermingle with the vast raw material bestowed upon us by all past civilizations to create a world of equality, fulfillment, and rest.

This state of affairs is possible, and it still has the name of communism. The great poet William Blake once wrote that the “history of all times and places is nothing else but improbabilities and impossibilities; what we should say, was impossible if we did not see it always before our eyes.” The impossible always exists! So, be realistic, demand the impossible! You will find that the impossible is not so unlikely after all. The dynamism of capitalism has created the capacities for a sustainable, egalitarian society of abundance. The power to confront the current masters of mankind has also emerged—the working class. Proletarians of the world are concentrated in the schools, the prisons, and the factories. Communication, education, and agitation, bound together by common experiences and grievances, can and does happen. Hope and imagination still live on (a tribute to the strength of human spirit!). We know how to operate our workplaces! We know how to keep society civil and effective! We know we have no need for capitalists and their state! Thus, the game is set; the pieces are in place for the grand struggles of this century. But a strategy and a vision is still necessary. Scholars and soldiers and workers of all nations must combine and collaborate. Organizations with total human emancipation as their ultimate goal must be created and connected together. The fight must be carried out on all fronts: in the workplace, against the state, and in the realm of ideas. The struggle will indeed be long and hard, but all will be pushing ever forward to the ultimate ends of revolution and human emancipation. That endpoint still has the name—and we need not be timid about this—of communism. Hear today’s prophecies and read the signs of the times. They foretell the fall of today’s kings!